20 Tips for Prioritizing Your Goals

We are now sitting firmly at the beginning of 2020, so I thought this time would be appropriate to do a “20 Tips” blog post. We’ll resume The Art of People Business segment next week. For many people, the mark of 2020 signals a sense of goal-setting awareness with some goal achievement to follow. And to those of you out there who have a strong desire to realize your goals in these next 12 months, the following 20 tips are devoted to you. Use them well.

1. Focus on the tasks that will move you forward toward your goals.
2. Stop allowing busywork to derail you from your true goal-attainment purpose. Doing unnecessary tasks or taking extra steps to get to your goals is a waste of your time and energy and causes you to work inefficiently for no beneficial reason. Discard the waste and work purposefully with what’s left.
3. It’s okay to set “stretch” goals for yourself. Stretch goals are those goals that will cause you to come outside of the box you’ve placed yourself into. But, don’t create goals that are unrealistic, whose sole purpose is meant to set you up for failure.
4. Get help when you need it and take help where you can get it. Let others be involved in your goal-achievement process, because everyone can use a little support and assistance at times. Delegate the tasks (that anyone can do) to others and concentrate on the more important tasks that only you can do justice to.
5. Look at the big picture when determining what you hope to achieve by the end of 2020. And evaluate where you currently reside. Then, research the steps that will get you from where you currently are to where you want to be. These steps will identify those goals you need to reach for.
6. Write down your goals or type them up — just record them SOMEWHERE. I guarantee your memory is not going to recall all the fine details, regarding your goal-setting plans. So, document the particulars that define the steps, leading toward GETTING THINGS DONE.
7. Factoring downtime (separate from periods of sleeping) into your daily schedule MUST be included as one of your priority goals that takes precedence over some of the others. Burn-out is real, folks. And, you can’t work toward achieving your goals if you don’t have the get-up-and-go to do the tasks, leading to the goals. Schedule rest periods into your daily routine, such as time for short breaks throughout the day, vacations, “treat yourself” days, mental health breaks, recreational activities, date nights, family/friend gatherings, etc. I have some helpful information on scheduling your goals in the following blog post: Goal-Setting Process for Writing & More – Step 4: Scheduling.
8. Don’t set goals for yourself that are someone else’s. It’ll be very difficult for you to commit to following through with tasks that aren’t your actual priorities. Make sure your goals are those priorities in life that are reflective of The Real You in mind, spirit, and heart.
9. Figure out how to control those distractions that prevent you from concentrating on what’s most important in your life. Distractions WILL come; you just have to be strong enough to manage them and prevent them from taking over your day. Social media, phone activity, email, the Internet (in general), and tv are some of the biggest culprits. By all means, don’t cut the distractions out completely because you’re not going to do that anyway. What I would suggest is to schedule them into your day somewhere (preferably not at the beginning of the day). If you schedule the distractions into your morning routine, you might find yourself in an unproductive mood all day long. Schedule them midday or in the evening, if possible.
10. Make taking care of your health one of your priority goals. Your productivity (literally, your life) depends on it. And when I say “health”, I’m referring to your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.
11. Also, make spending time with your family and friends, while developing and cultivating those relationships, a top-priority goal. You can reach all the goals you want, but they don’t mean as much if you don’t have quality people in your life to celebrate your “wins” with.
12. Don’t start on a lot of new goals until old priorities have been satisfied.
13. The more difficult or tiring tasks should be carried out during your most energetic time of the day. For many people, this time may be first thing in the morning before the day’s work has taken a toll on you and dwindled down your high-octane reserves.
14. The next few items have to do with the order in which to schedule your priority tasks. Start with your one-and-dones (your one-time only tasks). These tasks have an easily identifiable deadline and can be quickly placed on your schedule.
15. Following the one-and-dones, you will need to look at the tasks/goals that are repetitive and recurring and record them in your schedule. These activities are a regular part of your daily/weekly routine.
16. Then, determine those bigger, project-like goals to be tackled over time and brainstorm all the possible tasks that will arise out of working toward these more extensive goals. Visit my post, Goal-Setting Process for Writing & More – Step 1: Brainstorming for assistance.
17. For the tasks/goals that are not one-timers or repetitive in nature, define some type of deadline for getting them accomplished. For instance, you can sort out your brainstorming list and organize your action items by categories such as: a) goals you’d like to start on immediately, b) goals you’d like to start and complete in the next 3 months, c) goals you’d like to start and complete within 3 – 6 months, and d) goals that are 6 months or more away from probable implementation. See my post, Goal-Setting Process for Writing & More – Step 2: List-making, for more information.
18. Make your goals S.M.A.R.T., so it’ll be easier for you to incorporate them into your schedule. You can go to my posts, Goal-Setting Process for Writing & More – Step 3: SMART Goals and Goal-Setting Process for Writing & More – Step 3: SMART Goals (Cont.), to review the process for making your goals S.M.A.R.T.
19. Once you’ve identified your priorities for the next several months, invest in a system or systems that help keep your priorities visible as constant reminders of your to-dos. Use such items as: schedule boards (Schedule Board Before the Vision Board), vision boards, chalk and dry erase boards, charts, posters, calendars or planners, e-organizers (on phone, watch, or computer), etc.
20. Forever remaining stuck in the planning phase for prioritizing your goals gets you nowhere fast. You need to eventually step into the implementation phase. Do the work and see the results.